Through a partnership among IPHI, Giant Food, Amerigroup, the Anthem Foundation, and the Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) Workgroup of the Prince George’s Healthcare Action Coalition, Prince George’s Fresh increased access to healthy food for Prince George’s County residents. The program allowed medical professionals at participating health clinics to recommend produce coupons and nutrition education to patients experiencing food insecurity. Prince George’s Fresh was an innovative opportunity to engage cross-sectoral partners in an evidence-based model to address County health disparities and food insecurity.

For more information, visit:
Fact Sheet

Evaluation Report

Food Industry Association Community Uplift Recognition

IPHI and Maryland Nonprofits partnership supported Maryland’s community-based organizations, faith-based organizations (C/FBO), and local health departments (LHD) in addressing the social determinants of health (SDoH). The partnership utilized partner networks, experiences, and various resources to support capacity-building efforts.

IPHI supported Maryland organizations in addressing health disparities through a comprehensive strategy. The four-part strategy included:

• Assessment
• Training
• Communities of Practice
• Tailored Technical Assistance

The team worked to conduct a thorough assessments of local health departments and community/faith-based organizations to understand their strengths and capacity needs in promoting health equity. Based on these assessments, IPHI provided diverse online educational resources, including toolkits and webinars, and organized workshops on key topics. The initiative also fostered communities of practice through forums where organizations could share resources and best practices, and offered tailored technical assistance to address specific needs identified during the assessment phase.

This project was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with 100 percent funding provided by CDC/HHS.

The state (Maryland Dept of Health) supported this project and it was funded by the CDC RFA OT21 2103 Grant, National Initiative to Address COVID-19 Health Disparities Among Populations at High-Risk and Underserved, Including Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations and Rural Communities, for the provision of technical assistance and capacity building services to Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), Faith-Based Organizations (FBO’s), and Local Health Departments (LHDs).

The VDH admired IPHI’s success in supporting the Fairfax County Health Department’s (FCHD) COVID-19 response and recovery containment efforts over the preceding 15 months.

Within six weeks, IPHI recruited, hired, trained, and deployed nearly 200 COVID-19 case and contact investigators to support 21 health departments. This hiring surge was in addition to over 150 additional hires to bolster FCHD’s existing response and recovery efforts to the fall 2021 COVID-19 surge.

IPHI employed over 450 pandemic response workers to support local health departments with:
• case investigators
• contact interviewers
• community health workers (CHWs)
• epidemiologists
• call center staff
• environmental health specialists
• various management and administrative staff

IPHI created a customized Case and Contact Investigator training. The training focused on COVID-19 isolation and quarantine protocols, vaccine education, motivational interviewing, and role-playing.

The hands-on training worked to prepare and deploy staff as quickly as possible to assist with emergency response. Staff also participated in self-guided COVID-19 courses offered by Johns Hopkins University and received extensive training with experienced field regional trainers. After assisting with the pandemic response since June 2020, IPHI has expertise in supporting governmental disease investigation, containment, and systems for rapid workforce scale-up and deployment.

Many of the IPHI team members progressed to permanent public health workforce in various non-profits, government health agencies, and federal agencies. The goal of IPHI’s public/private pandemic response partnerships was to provide immediate and cost–effective workforce expansion for government public health response and to develop models for effective emergency response that can be replicated.

The Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) Cities & Towns Campaign was a past initiative by IPHI that worked with local governments in Maryland and Virginia to promote public health. The campaign provided free guidance and resources to city and town leaders to help them create healthier communities.

The project focused on three key areas:

• Education: IPHI staff helped local leaders understand how their communities’ physical and social environments impact residents’ health. They showed them how to implement policies that encourage healthier eating and more physical activity.
• Assessment: The campaign helped municipalities review their existing policies to identify how they affect community health. The project provided a menu of best practices and policies, from developing pedestrian-friendly streets to implementing healthy vending policies.
• Adoption: As a first step, towns and cities created a HEAL Resolution, which acted as a blueprint for improving their food and physical activity environments. The campaign then provided ongoing support, including in-person meetings, webinars, and training, to help them implement their goals.

Outcome:

At the end of the project, 65 local jurisdictions in Maryland and Virginia, covering nearly 2 million people, had adopted resolutions and other policies and practices to shape their communities into places where it is easier for residents and employees to make healthy choices about physical activity and nutrition.

The HEAL Cities & Towns Campaign for the Mid-Atlantic was a part of a growing national campaign that included California, Oregon, and Colorado. IPHI embarked on this initiative in 2012 with funding from Kaiser Permanente, a founding partner, and a strategic partnership with the Maryland & Virginia Municipal Leagues.

The goal of EIS & P4P is to decrease the number of under-resourced individuals with HIV/AIDS by increasing access to care. EIS & P4P also provide the added benefit of educating and motivating persons living with HIV on the importance and benefits of getting into and staying in HIV care.

The Institute for Public Health Innovation offers community health worker (CHW) models of early intervention services in Virginia.

IPHI employs four CHWs in Northern and Northwest Virginia to facilitate access to HIV medical care and social services for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). The project has an emphasis on populations that often face barriers to entering and remaining in care, potentially including communities of color, women living in poverty, immigrants, individuals with substance abuse or mental health challenges, the homeless, young gay and bisexual men, those recently released from prison/jail, and others.

CHWs pursue various short-term activities, typically lasting 3-6 months, until new or disengaged consumers fully engage in HIV care. Our CHWs:

• Find people living with HIV/AIDS who are not currently receiving medical care;
• Build peer-based trust and provide information about living with HIV;
• Provide personalized assistance to help PLWHA enter and navigate service systems; and
• Support PLWHA throughout the early part of their care until they become fully engaged in that care.

CHWs as part of inter-disciplinary teams:

Northern Virginia EIS and P4P CHWs are based at community-based and medical sites and work closely with clinical and case management staff. This is critical so they can effectively identify the clients to focus on and coordinate CHW support services with those of the case manager and other staff.

Presently IPHI CHWs are placed at:

• Fredericksburg Area HIV/AIDS Support Services (FAHASS)
• AIDS Response Effort (ARE)
• Alexandria Neighborhood Health Services Inc (ANHSI)

Some CHWs cover non-clinical points of entry, including testing sites and various community-based organizations, and partner with clinical sites and hospitals to support community outreach and linkage to care, including:

• INOVA Juniper Program
• The Infectious Disease Clinic of Mary Washington Hospital
• NOVA Salud
• Fauquier Clinic
• Health Departments across Northern Virginia

IPHI conducts evaluation for these projects, and analysis captures process outcomes and client-level outcomes for these initiatives.

This project is funded by Ryan White Part A funds through the Northern Virginia Regional Commission and by the Virginia Department of Health.